Google Shares Reports on Impact of Geospatial Services on the World

Oxera is a UK-based Eropean focused economic consultant. A news posting on the company website describe the report it prepared for Google:

Google has today published an Oxera report [What is the impact of geo?] that estimates the revenues from global Geo services at $150 billion to $270 billion per year. For context, these findings suggest that this growing industry is already larger than estimates of the size of the video game industry, and generates around one-third of the annual revenue generated by the airline industry.

The post goes on to describe the benefits of geospatial services - saving time, lives, money, enhance productivity, teaching geography. There's also an infographic of that data. ... and includes a quote from Google on how pleased it is with Google Earth and Google Maps.

‘Geo technologies are changing the way people, corporations and governments interact with the world, making them more efficient and enabling cost savings,’ said Charlie Hale, Google Maps Public Policy Analyst. ‘We’re thrilled that geo services like Google Maps and Google Earth are helping to grow the global economy, enabling job opportunities, leading the way towards future innovation.’

The report organizes the impacts into three categories:

This study aims to quantify the impact of Geo services on the world economy and consumer welfare. For the purposes of the study, this impact has been divided into three broad categories:

– direct effects—the footprint of the Geo services measured according to the revenue generated by firms developing and providing Geo services and the value that they add;

– consumer effects—the benefits that accrue to consumers, businesses and government from using Geo services, over and above the value that may be paid for any services (ie, the revenue accounted for under the direct effects category); and

– wider economic effects—the benefits that accrue from Geo services improving efficiency elsewhere in the economy, by creating new products and services and creating cost savings that cannot be generated by other sectors.

A second report is from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) here in Boston. It's called Putting the U.S. Geospatial Services Industry On the Map.

The main focus of this study, which was commissioned by Google, is three-fold:
• 1 Assess the size: Tally the jobs and revenues of the U.S. geospatial services sector
• 2 Trace the impact: Establish the benefits that U.S. businesses and consumers derive from
this new industry sector
• 3 Identify trends: Highlight the evolution of this new sector, including interdependencies
with public policy and both private and public investment.

The results are presented in a series of slides (pdf), dated 12/2012. BCG describes that document as "supplemental materials to a much deeper study." The company pointed me to a June 2012 report (Geospatial services: a $1.6 trillion growth engine for the US Economy, 4 page pdf), a Dec 2012 Q & A Five Questions interview – "The Geospatial growth engine" (link, registration required) and notes there is a more complete study, not all of which is publicly released.